Article
Experience of Awe: An Expansive Approach to Everyday Aesthetics
Contemporary Aesthetics
(2015)
Abstract
As opposed to Melchionne and Naukkarinen, I defend an expansive definition of everyday aesthetics, one that includes festivals, tourism, and many daily activities of artists and other professionals, along with most ordinary and common experiences. I argue for continuities between aesthetics of everyday life and the aesthetics of art and nature. Looking through a window, for example, may involve aspects of all three. Although I agree with Melchionne that everyday aesthetics is closely related to questions of subjective well-being, I take a more expansive approach to this, drawing from recent psychological studies of the experience of “awe” to stress the importance of such experiences in subjective well-being, thus tying the high points of everyday aesthetics more closely with the high points in the aesthetics of art and nature.
Keywords
- awe,
- definition,
- everyday aesthetics,
- Melchionne,
- Naukkarinen,
- restrictivists,
- subjective well-being
Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
Citation Information
Thomas Leddy. "Experience of Awe: An Expansive Approach to Everyday Aesthetics" Contemporary Aesthetics Vol. 13 (2015) ISSN: 1932-8478 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/tom_leddy/190/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC International License.